Kayla Harris

Name: Kayla Harris

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Sewing, science fiction, fighting games, cosplay

Appearance: Kayla stands at 5'5" and weighs 110 lbs, with very little muscle definition due to a lack of exercise. She is African-American with a light brown skin tone due to her father's mixed-race Irish heritage. She has a round face with a small nose, thick lips, and large brown eyes, with some light freckles across the bridge of her nose. She has black hair, naturally curly, which would reach down to her shoulders if she straightened it, but she tends to keep it tied up in a messy bun instead.

Kayla prefers comfortable clothing, wearing t-shirts and jeans with bright colors and pastel tones that help her stand out, along with dark-colored sneakers and flats. During the colder months of the year, she'll wear sweaters and hoodies, but her wardrobe is otherwise unchanged. During the school trip, she wore a stylized gray t-shirt with the words "JAZZ MACHINE" superimposed over a cartoonish picture of a robot playing a saxophone, over which she wore an oversized blue and white pullover hoodie designed to emulate a shiba inu, with dog ears on the hood. She also wore a light blue and white plaid skirt that reaches down to just above the knee, along with white knee-high socks and black Converse sneakers.

Biography: Kayla Harris was born on October 30th, 1999 to Rodrick and Angela Harris, an account manager for an environmental remediation company and a freelance journalist specializing in art respectively. Kayla is the third-oldest of six children. Her older sister Jazmine (22) has graduated college and lives with the family while searching for a career and her older brother Octavius (19) is out of state studying biomedical engineering in New York. Her younger brother Marquis (15) is a student at George Hunter High with Kayla and her twin siblings May and August (11) are in middle school together. In addition, the family has two pets: a border collie named Charlie (8) and a tabby cat named Felicia (4).

Life with such a large family has been chaotic and often fraught with conflict, whether it's quarreling over bathroom rights in the morning or simple matters like what to watch on television. Kayla and her siblings would argue constantly, but with no hard feelings towards one another, just regular sibling squabbles. Kayla's parents, while quick to reprimand them or take away TV/gaming privileges if it ever came to blows, would let them carry on in most cases, preferring to let them resolve their own arguments and come to a compromise without their intervention.

Kayla was born in Atlanta, GA where her grandmother Arlene lived. Even as a child, Kayla's enthusiasm for learning new things became quickly evident, as she became raptly interested in her grandmother's sewing machine. Arlene was a retired seamstress who used to operate her own small designer clothing business and still found new projects to work on in her advanced years. As a toddler, Kayla would sit and watch her grandmother work, fascinated by the mechanical sound of the machine and Arlene's deft handiwork. At four years old, with close supervision and hands-on advice, she began to play with the machine herself; clumsily at first, but putting together crude clothing for her dolls by the time she was six. She was bursting with ideas and would make them tiny hats, dresses, and eventually unusual costumes so they could be different characters based on whatever ideas she had from week to week.

At the same time, her father Rodrick would kindle a love of science fiction by reading to her at night. He was an avid sci-fi fan himself and would dramatize stores like The Iron Man and The Little Prince with narration and dramatic voices, which ended up stoking her imagination. She began envisioning worlds and strange universes with robots, aliens, and fantastic technologies, prompting her to also make her dolls into astronauts and scientists uncovering new life or discovering new undiscovered civilizations. As she grew up and could handle the more mature science fiction novels, she would take an interest in Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, and Isaac Asimov, eventually adding sci-fi manga/anime like Cowboy Bebop and Space Dandy in her teenage years.

Her life would take an unexpected turn in 2007 when her father would get a lucrative environmental science job in Chattanooga, TN. Though she was sad to leave her grandmother behind along with the friends she'd made in elementary school, Arlene would encourage her to think of it as a new adventure and a chance to make new friends and explore a brand new place. As moving day came closer, she surprised her granddaughter with a gift of a brand-new sewing machine, encouraging her to continue her passion for sewing and to try bigger and better new things. While Kayla begin to adjust to life in the new city, she would keep in touch with her grandmother and her Atlanta friends over social media, sharing pictures of the things she'd made in order to show Arlene how much she'd improved.

To that end, Kayla began trying a more ambitious project: designing full-size clothes for herself. The initial results were awkward, ill-fitting, and frustrating. Clothes for dolls didn't have to be a perfect fit since she could fill in the holes with her imagination, but her parents weren't going to let her go outside wearing baggy, badly-proportioned, or amateurish outfits, so a lot of her early efforts ended up just going in the trash. Instead of giving up, she would take these failures as object lessons, looking up tips on proportions and consulting her grandmother for advice. Over time, her designs would gradually improve, to the point where by the time she was twelve, she could make passable dresses and she was beginning to branch out into more unusual ventures, thanks to two new hobbies she acquired in Chattanooga.

The first was an acquired love of fighting games. Her older brother Octavius, an avid gamer, had tried to get her to play games with him when they were kids, but nothing he liked seemed to stick with her. She found simulation games to be slow-paced and boring, strategy games required too much micromanagement, and the only time she had the remotest interest in story-driven games was when it was something science fiction-related like Halo, and she tended to dismiss those eventually because the technology seemed like it was too close to magic rather than hard science for her taste. This changed when she was invited to play Soul Calibur V since Octavius needed someone else to play the game with him. Kayla agreed because she wanted to accommodate her brother's hobby, and to her surprise, she found the frenetic pace and the back and forth to be highly engrossing, and the two of them would spend hours learning combos and competing with each other, to the annoyance of her younger siblings who wanted to also use the TV. Having found common ground with her brother, Kayla and Octavius began finding other fighting games to play like Guilty Gear and the Tekken series. When she realized there were fighting game competitions in the local area, she decided to compete in her teens, despite not being at a professional level, just so she could get the experience of playing against people at the highest tier. To this date, she has never gotten past the first round, and it's disappointing for her, but like her failures at sewing, she just views these as a learning opportunity and tries to improve herself every time she's beaten.

Stemming off of her new love of video games, Kayla also acquired a second hobby in her teenage years: cosplay. She'd been fascinated by the outfits that the female characters wore in these games and decided that it would be fun to try sewing something similar. She'd been making regular clothes for a while now, in addition to scarves, sashes, handbags, and other assorted items that she'd been gifting out to friends, so the next logical step was to try something a bit more exotic. Her first character that she tried imitating was Hisako from Killer Instinct, which ended up turning out quite well. She would wear the outfit to a local Halloween costume competition, taking second place behind someone dressed like Harley Quinn. This proved to be very encouraging, and she would branch out into even more over-the-top outfits, wearing them to anime conventions and video game competitions in order to show off her work and start developing her brand. She doesn't have much of a following, but it's been steadily accumulating on social media sites such as Instagram. She's even gotten a bit of money on the side doing requests for outfits from her peers at school, which has convinced her that it could be a full-time profession once she graduates from high school.

Life in school at Chattanooga has been exciting for Kayla. Though her grades haven't been exceptional except for science and math courses, she's still shown some intelligence and creativity in social studies and writing/design courses, allowing her to maintain a B average overall even with her weaker subjects. She's managed to befriend people at George Hunter High School with similar interests in science fiction and anime, and due to prodding from a friend, she also is a member of the J-Pop club, though she likes the performers more for their fashion than their style of music. It has had its downs though, since Kayla is not a sort to mince words or hold back when she wants to help out a friend. As a result, she has badmouthed people or been talked into playing pranks on her fellow students or occasionally vandalizing school property as a joke. Her primary issue is impulse control, since she tends to jump right into things without moderation, even if it occasionally gets her into trouble. She has had this habit since elementary school, where she would occasionally cut in line and shove people off the slides if she wanted to go first, getting her sent home for her bad behavior. She's hardly mellowed out in her older years and will still push forward in line if she thinks she can get away with it, but she does it out of enthusiasm, not out of a desire to be a bully.

Part of her issue with speaking her mind is that she doesn't tolerate bullies and people who persecute others and won't hesitate to call them out, no matter what the consequences may be. As a result of drawing attention to herself, she's been bullied in the past, ridiculed for her outfits, and picked on by some of the more popular kids, but that hasn't dampened her spirits. Rather, she's taken comfort and satisfaction in knowing that they'll all be going their separate ways after high school and she won't have to see them again. All she has to do is wait them out. Kayla doesn't have a strong temper to speak of, and she wouldn't have the muscle mass to fight back if she wanted to since she hardly exercises beyond gym class activities due to being constantly caught up in her work.

As she approaches graduation, Kayla doesn't have a clear picture of where to go for her future education. She believes that she could make a living in her grandmother's footsteps, just designing clothes and doing contract work for others. Her parents would prefer that she go into the sciences like Octavius and Jazmine, but she doesn't feel a particular calling in that area, even though she's good at her coursework. Her sewing is her passion, and if she has to go to college, she would prefer to just get a general degree and not bother with higher education beyond an undergraduate degree.

Advantages: Kayla has excellent manual dexterity due to her love of sewing and fighting games. She's creative and imaginative and is unafraid to think outside the box. She's also made quite a few friends at school, especially among the nerdier crowd.

Disadvantages: Kayla isn't very strong due to a lack of exercise. She is impulsive and doesn't think before acting, which could put her in a bad situation, and she has had a comfortable life without hardships which is unlikely to prepare her for the challenges she will face.

Designated Number: Female student No. 067

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Designated Weapon: Steel folding chair

Conclusion: I can expect lots of - whose music is that? BAH GAWD, IT'S G067! SHE'S COMING DOWN THE RAMP AND SHE'S GOT A STEEL CHAIR! LORD HAVE MERCY, SHE'S BREAKING THE COMPETITION IN HALF! STOP THE DAMN MATCH, SHE'S BEATING THEM LIKE A GOVERNMENT MULE! - Dennis Lourvey

'The above biography is as written by Blastinus. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Blastinus

Kills: None

Killed By: Nona Hart

Collected Weapons: Steel folding chair (assigned weapon)

Allies: Roxie Borowski

Enemies: Nona Hart

Mid-game Evaluation: Kayla found Roxie Borowski in the vicinity of the shoe tree- both girls were inclined to stay amicable. Kayla's main use of her assigned weapon was as a slightly more comfortable place to seat herself. They talked pleasantly- as much as was possible- and exchanged snacks. Their council was interrupted by the appearance of a distraught Nona Hart, who claimed she had been robbed. The two extended welcomes and commiseration with her, but then realized the more Nona spoke that they were in potential hot water- Nona was still deeply in denial, and refused to believe they'd been kidnapped. Kayla's attempt to bluntly spell out the truth went nowhere- so she and Roxie silently agreed to buy into the delusions for a while. They were now 'waiting for the trip bus', not that it made Nona seem any less likely to blow up. That aside they were able to walk through the simulation, Kayla making useful observations about the status of the things they'd packed for the trip. The appearance of Danya's survival guide, however, seemed to unnerve Nona and she stalked off. That left Roxie and Kayla alone, they decided to try and tail Nona as best they could, and Kayla wondered if their mental state would be as unraveled as their peer's.

They lost Nona by the time the trees turned into the buildings of the island- particularly around the stables, where Kayla and Roxie found Layla DeBerg right outside. Layla acknowledged them then stepped in, where she confronted Ron Kiser and Paloma Salt, the former of whom she claimed had run off on her. Something didn't add up to Kayla- Ron was nursing a nasty wound, and Layla's knife was bloodied. Ron and Paloma were immediately hostile, posturing for everyone else to back off, while Layla continued to insist on her own innocence. Kayla tried to appeal to everyone involved- whatever had happened was irrelevant, and they could keep the peace. Kayla caught Layla in a lie- with barely enough time to put distance between themselves. Ron chose that time to storm off with Paloma in tow, and Kayla disengaged from the whole mess with Roxie, even more cognizant now of just how badly island was impacting the mental state of her peers, driving them to such paranoid and confusing confrontations.

Come Day Two, just prior to announcements, they were able to find refuge in the lake's boathouse and eat and rest. Both of them dreaded announcements, but Kayla was able to at least find it in herself to forgive the possible killers in the abstract. Their quiet moment was interrupted by Richard Smith, who awkwardly blustered into the boathouse and held them at gunpoint for all of a second before backing down immediately. His willingness to back down on the possible threat, however, didn't comfort her given that his gun was still out. She wanted a moment, and decided to depart the boathouse for a while to clear her head. She then ran into a familiar face.

They, already fully experiencing their gender revelations, immediately confronted Kayla as they burst through the trees, grabbing her shirt with the blades of their glove weapon and demanding answers. Kayla didn't know how to respond, she freaked out and tried to get distance. Their assailant continued to charge forward, trying to firmly grip Kayla and stop her from running while they interrogated her. Marco's charge pinned Kayla to the ground, but more importantly, lacerated her throat with the blades of the glove. Kayla was already gone, too weak to put up any further resistance. She could only regret that she had been too passive, and hope to see Marco in hell when he bit it.

Post-Game Evaluation: This is what happens when you talk to the crazy kid. - Josie Knight

Memorable Quotes: "Whatever happened, it's done. We don't have to be killers. We're better than that." - Regardless of whether Ron or Layla was telling the truth, during the confrontation in the stables

"Hard to believe, kids trying to kill each other out there (...) But who can blame them? There's a gun to their heads." - To Roxie, while waiting for announcements.

Threads
Below is a list of threads containing Kayla, in chronological order.

V7 Pregame: Prom:
 * Pingu in the Prison
 * It's All Good Man
 * This Woman's Work
 * Monachopsis
 * SPLAT!
 * Lo Mein Event
 * Just Dance (#SwiftBall)
 * Trapped in the Bathroom: Chapter 173 [HD 1080p ] (#SwiftBall)
 * The Mascara Snake (#SwiftBall)
 * The Good Times Are Killing Me (#SwiftBall)
 * Cinderella Step

V7:
 * dear army guys come quik there are terrorists- roxie
 * Gotta Fake it 'till You Make It
 * We're Gonna Need a Better Boat

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Kayla Harris. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * Kayla's a kind of difficult character for me to talk about due to the circumstances surrounding her story. The thing of it is, if Kayla sprang from the aether right at the start of V7 as so many other characters have, I'd say she was pretty alright, if still the weakest of her handler's cast. But that's not what happened. Kayla was actually adopted after Pregame, and her pre-adoption storyline under Jilly was both extensive and epic.

See, in Pregame, Kayla was one of those characters who didn't come into a thread to sit around. No, Kayla brought her special brand of wildness and chaos to wherever she went. She had a very strong comic voice, with a sort of sense of inscrutable higher purpose causing her to do things like crawl out the window onto the roof at #Swiftball, and the charisma to sell all of that without ever being less than charming. Most of the characters who were adopted during or after Pregame had a post or two, maybe a couple threads at most, but Kayla generally kept pace with Jilly's other characters and felt very much a part of his core roster. Her fingerprints were on a number of the most memorable Pregame scenes, and I think most handlers would've recognized her. Thus, I was somewhat surprised when she was left out of his apps, but really surprised when she was offered up for adoption.

I've talked in the past about how adoptions go, and how taking over a good character is often way harder than dealing with a mediocre or average one. Kayla was not merely good but iconic in Pregame, and while I feel like Blast did his best to tap into the core of her concept and give her his own spin, I think the weight of Pregame Kayla was too much and in-game Kayla never quite felt like she was landing, never quite managed to hit that singular voice or those moments of outrageous narrative ingenuity that made her so distinct. Like I said at the start, this is entirely about the adoption thing—call her Kayleigh and wipe her Pregame slate and we're looking at a more positive if still muted assessment. Her actual scenes are pretty good. She has solid chemistry with Roxie, and she plays a key role in setting up the arc of one of my favorite characters in V7 (though I'd say her actual death is probably not my highlight pick for anyone involved, the lead-up and repercussions are spot on). But there's always that specter of the force-of-nature Kayla of days past, and I honestly am not really convinced that her story benefited from the change of hands and the progression into the game. - MurderWeasel